Deepwater Horizon: Grassroots Mapping & Spill Projections

Since our last post on the Gulf Oil Slick, little progress has come, with the exception of a small containment dome & riser pipe to mitigate a minor percentage of the of the total flow.

The addiction to oil has made this Gulf Spill, something of an inevitability. After all, a spill near this calibre happened decades ago with Ixtoc, yet the rules had not tightened. This photograph, posted in the google earth forums, shows the Gulf of Mexico at night. The sheer volume of lights offshore highlight the ubiquity of gulf drilling operations.

The oil has been flowing for so long, now, that the slick has now progressed out into the Atlantic, via the Gulf Stream Loop Current. A visualization of this is available in this projection below from UCAR.

Here we’d like to highlight a major ongoing development in the geographic web to monitor the spill, Grassroots Mapping, brought to our attention by SpatialSustain.

This campaign is centered on getting as many kites outfitted with observation censors in the sky to act as independent observation stations on the gulf.

For up to date spill estimates and figures, please continue to consult Skytruth, as your primary source for information.

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